sing sweet charity, take what's left of me
by black-ostias
Summary: PacificRimAU. daryl always wears a mask of starlight, and you don't ever get the truth from him, not without teasing it out of his lungs with your tongue, drawing it from the rising bruises on his skin. except there are no secrets anymore, with the way he's looking at you. rick/daryl. EDIT:pistengyawa.tumblr. com/post/83479472416/rick-grimes-daryl-dixon-pacific-rim-au-holy COMPLETE


**inspired by a conversation i had with a friend about a Pacific Rim AU. this is me trying to convince her that the boys don't have to be copilots to be madly in love.**

**quick backstory for those not familiar with the Pacific Rim 'verse: kaiju are aliens that attack the planet from the oceans, jaegers are giant robots that combat them, rangers are pilots operating the jaegers, the drift is what makes pilots meld minds through the jaeger and operate it together. you really should watch the movie, anyway, it's hella amazing.**

**title from the silent comedy's bartholomew. nothing is mine but the feels.**

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><p>The Drift is silence, is what they tell you, except they never tell you about what comes after the silence, the storm that overtakes everything else.<p>

You step out of the conn-pod on shaky foal limbs, burning muscle, and someone else's reliefexhaustion thrumming alongside your own. Michonne takes your hand as the techs detach your drivesuits, and you squeeze hers in turn, don't let go until you reach the medbay and the staff sweep in to examine you.

"Your vitals are holding steady," Dr. Subramanian tells you after MRIs and blood tests that seem to take forever, jotting down his findings on his tablet and flashing a quick reassuring smile. "I'll tell LOCCENT and the Marshal that the press can wait for tomorrow. You guys need your rest."

"Thanks, Caleb," Michonne murmurs, and you can feel that it's an effort for her to step off the examining table and leave the cocoon of warmth from where you're slumped into each other. It's always tough, feeling the last remnants of your connection ebb away, leaving you to deal with the eight hours of unearthed emotions in shared headspace by your lonesome.

Redflag's table at the dining hall is empty, the entire crew down at the launch bay decontaminating your Jaeger. Michonne alternates eating with watching the local news channel on her phone, and when you glance at the screen you see shots of Himantura's corpse laying on Cavite's seaside. Most of the coverage is expressed in Tagalog but you understand the sentiment well enough.

"Metro Manila thanks you, Rangers of Redflag Queen," the mayor says crisply, a thousand citizens crowding behind her in the camera to wave and cheer. A little boy with the same wispy black hair as Carl's is riding his father's shoulders, his rail-thin arms stretched in triumph to the black sky.

You're to return to Tokyo Shatterdome in two days and report directly to Marshal Greene-Rhee, and then it's home on shore leave to Carl and Judith. You can barely wait to have them in your arms again.

On a good day, Michonne and you hole up together in your shared quarters, riding out the last waves of the Drift in comfortable peace and quiet. By morning you would be yourselves again, settled into your own skins with little bits of each other shared between.

Today is not a good day.

The Drift is silence, until there are four broken souls in your head, all at the same time. Andrea is there out of secondhand memory, and Shane. Shane is. Well.

Your bleak musings are interrupted by Lori calling, and you answer it after only a moment's hesitation, knowing that it's dawn where they are. "I'm okay," you say before she can breathe out her concerns. Even on your small phone screen, you can see the exhaustion ringing her eyes, dawn just starting to filter in. "We're okay. Did the news paint it that bad?"

"Bad enough that Carl got worried," Lori sighs, sounding as beaten-down as you are. "Redflag was in pretty bad shape, and you didn't show up on camera."

"Wait, you guys follow the whole thing? Didn't you and Carl sleep?"

Lori's face and voice turns acrid. "How could we, since you were locked with that thing in combat for ten hours?"

Beside you, Michonne squeezes your elbow, and you lean into the reassuring touch, exhaling in dejection. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We were pretty tired, didn't want to deal with the media circus."

Even on a different hemisphere, your ex-wife's mute annoyance still scrapes your skin. "Well, Carl wants to talk to you."

"Okay, goodbye," but she's already handing the phone to Carl, and your son's face crowds the monitor as he yelps, "Dad! Dad, Redflag was so cool, you were going _pshiww _with that sword –" He takes it upon himself to remake the whole thing, and you laugh though there's a thorn in your chest. Carl is eight and the gravity of this whole situation hasn't made its impact on him yet. Part of you wants to keep him as a happy child forever, but someday you have to sit with him and talk about the lives lost each time a kaiju surfaces, the sacrifices made, the agony it took so you could get into Redflag again.

A video call isn't the best time to do it, though, and so you ask him, "Can I see your sister?"

Carl's gap-toothed grin grows gentler, protective brother senses kicking in, and he pads over to Judith's room, the image bouncing until it comes to a stop on your baby girl, still slumbering in her crib. You show her to Michonne, and she smiles, mouths at you, _beautiful_.

"Hug her for me when she wakes up," you say, and Carl nods at the edge of the frame, serious in carrying out his mission.

"'Kay. Love you, Dad."

You kiss your fingertip and press it to Judith's image, then Carl's. "I love you too," you tell them, and you wilt into your chair when the screen goes dark. Stolen moments are all you seem to have with your children, the last few joys of your life.

Lori never understood how much it killed you to be away from them, from her, except she saw as well as you did how you started gravitating towards Shane more and more. The divorce wasn't a messy affair, and you could still see the kids, the only blessing you were afforded.

Michonne walks you to your room before departing to hers. "See you in the morning," she says, one last parting touch of her knuckles against your cheek, a fond punch. Your copilot has her own personal hell to carry, and you love and respect each other enough to deal with your grief in private.

That doesn't mean you don't feel like you're drowning all alone.

Except when you walk up to your room, Daryl is waiting inside.

Daryl, wearing civilian clothes and a jetlagged half-grin, perched on your bunk like he belongs there and not halfway around the world where Mammoth Apostle is stationed, where he and Carol are supposed to be waiting for the next kaiju attack, Daryl is _here_.

"Hey," you manage, and you don't quite hide the hesitance in your greeting, because the last time you saw each other, he had rolled off his mattress screaming, and you and Carol had to convince him that he was safe, Merle wasn't bleeding to death from losing a hand to Tailsplitter, his father wasn't coming for him, he was safe, and once the two of you were alone you kissed the bruises along his forearms, his quivering stomach, until the ice and terror left his eyes. The morning after was spent exchanging stilted goodbyes before Daryl had to leave for Lima, with his hand lingering on your shoulder.

But he's here now.

"You're lookin like a million bucks," he says dryly, and that startles a laugh out of you, raw-sounding as it is. You toe off your boots and the next thing you know you're pinned against the wall, his nose against yours and his fingers around your wrists, where you're sure he can feel your pulse ratchet up.

There's this jittery feeling in your stomach and you're starting to feel anxious. A voice is telling you to get away, nail Daryl in the gut and leave but that's not you, that's Shane, Shane's voice bouncing around in your mind. You bite your lip and close your eyes, wishing him away.

Daryl brings you back to earth by kissing you, kissing you slowly and thoroughly enough to make you dizzy, make you hook a leg over the stone of his hip and curve your back up on pure instinct. He kisses you until you don't feel so weary inside out, and leads you to your bed, spreads you out with his hands warm on your thighs and. God.

He's searching for something in your face, but seems to need reassurance since he asks, "What do you need?"

And you ache something fierce because a year ago what you both needed were fuck buddies, bodies to keep you warm. But then you caught him fresh from a drop and he was hyperventilating in a bathroom trying to get Ed Peletier away, Will Dixon away. A person can barely keep themselves together after a lifetime of tragedy, how are they to stand under the crushing weight of two, to be relived over and over until there's nothing left?

_make it stop_, he'd pleaded to you then, and that's what you ask him to do now. For you, it's Shane's poison you need to draw out, the bits of him tumbling about like dirty ice bleeding contaminants into water. Shane's anger and kisses and convoluted love and his denial that he ever wanted you despite the fact that you fucked him almost every time after you left the Drift, hung up on each other and too terrified to admit it.

Daryl kneels to tug off your shirt, his palms smoothing over the circuit burns all over your left side, from when Biantal ripped Shane out of your Jaeger, out of your head, your life. You should have died, then, from the neural overload, but you finished the beast off, piloted Redflag all the way back to the nearest shore.

It was an hour of operating solo, but you'll hold the scars for the rest of your days.

"Hey," Daryl whispers, biting at the hollow of your throat. "Don't wander off."

"Keep me focused, then," you breathe out, a challenge that he rises up to meet eagerly. He smirks and bends down, his mouth a small animate furnace around your nipple, hands reaching down to yank off your pants, and you don't so much as make a coherent word as just sort of moan, weaving your fingers through his hair.

He swallows around you completely through your shorts and your vision blows red. You arch into it, your whimper cut short by him reaching up to feed you his fingers, and you suck at them fiercely, the only leverage you have. His groan vibrates onto your flesh and you tear his hand away from your mouth, gasping up at the ceiling, "Please, Daryl, I need —"

"Hush, sweetheart, we'll get there," he soothes you, teeth scraping low on your belly. That's what gets to you, his using such a nonsensical endearment without turning it into a condescending barb. Comrades and soldiers, staying warm at night in the oldest of ways, simply because you're so far from home, just because you could die pretty much at any time. Adrenaline and human touch, except it stopped being about just that long ago.

You wrap your leg around his shoulder, press down in protest until he pushes your boxers to your ankles, slides his still-wet digits against your ass, teasing at your opening, seeking permission. In reply, you twist around far enough to reach for the lube sitting in your bedside table, all but chucking it at his head in your haste.

Daryl chuckles as you flush red, and you let him pull you on a pivot, until you're straddling him, your knees snug around his hips. You're made acutely aware of how hard he is through his jeans, how naked you are while he's still fully-clothed, and you ask him, still embarrassed, "Aren't you gonna. Y'know."

"Nah." He kisses your upper lip, smiling fondly when you go cross-eyed from trying to look at him. "Tonight's about you."

That's what you told him, the last time you did this, as you licked him clean and ignored his burbled protests of returning the favor. The sickhotexcited feeling returns, and you grind down on him, insolent as a Jaeger fly, nearly making him spill the lube across your sheets.

"_Rick_," he chastises you, sounding pained, and you restrain your grin with only minimal success, though everything else goes flying out the window the second he retaliates by slipping his finger inside you, deep enough that the force of it slams you to pieces, your mind going blissfully silent.

You grip his shoulders so you can rock back, shuddering at his tongue on your ear, your throat. He twists his hand in your sweat-damp curls, kissing you as he snakes in a second finger, the distraction not enough to let you ignore the burn and stretch of it, and it's perfect, so perfect, the only kind of hurt you want.

Something about this time feels different. Daryl always wears a mask of starlight, and you don't ever get the truth from him, not without teasing it out of his lungs with your tongue, drawing it from the rising bruises on his skin. Except there are no secrets anymore, with the way he's looking at you, tilting you forward until you're flat against the mattress with his fingers still moving inside you, making every cell in your body cry out.

"You trust me?" he rasps, the query accompanied with another delightful crook of his fingers, and when you whine "yes god of course I do" it's not entirely attributable to the endorphins. You trust him, as much as you do Michonne in your Jaeger. The best kind of sex has always been like Drifting anyway, the whole world narrowing down to two minds and souls twining together, in sync.

With Shane, everything was always a competition, a race to the end never savored properly, and you grew tired and heart-hurt from that. His cocky grin whenever he had some Jaeger fly dangling on his arm he could fuck that wasn't you, and you'd pretend you didn't know exactly what would happen in the expensive suites you stayed in, how he'd take her on his hands and knees like he did you—

And then, like it's his own way of reminding you to stay with him, Daryl puts his hand around your neck and clenches.

You panic briefly, scared, but his eyes never leave yours, his own breath coming in starts and stops, as though he's the one being choked and not you, and so you force your muscles to relax, gasping quietly as your circulation and air supply depletes in stages. He hasn't stopped stroking that lightningfire place inside you, single-minded as ever. He loosens his hold after a while, allowing you a brief respite before squeezing again, but this time it's accompanied by him scissoring a third finger into you, relentless.

It's tighter, this stranglehold, and it seems that you must be some kind of pervert because you can't remember ever being this hard, this insensate, clawing at his biceps like a caged animal. He finds a smooth rhythm, squeezing your neck and curling his fingers against your prostate at the same time, until the mild asphyxiation alone has you moaning, Pavlovian reaction. It's such a thin fucking line.

He presses harder against you, his palm flat against your balls as he growls profanities, quickens the motions of his fingers. The world is narrowing, siphoning off, fuzzing at the edges because you haven't tasted oxygen in a while and it's deeply maroon behind your eyes. You can see the veins on the backs of your eyelids, laced like nets.

Your last coherent thought is to get a hand around yourself, and it's brilliant, a masterstroke, because everything in your head goes silent, even the bits that aren't Shane. You come for days, weeks, hoarsely yelling out Daryl's name as you do it, your nerves lit up in Christmas lights. At some point he finally loosens his grip because you're hauling in air again, shaking from the sweet force of it. He groans low, his mouth open and sliding damp across your sternum.

"What about you?" you wheeze, your larynx feeling punctured, well-used.

He crawls up to lie beside you and say, "I'm good. Just watching you, that was." He never finishes his sentence, his eyes aglow with his own telltale euphoria, and it sends one last frisson of heat through you, the fact that he got off from this.

"You kinky sonuvabitch," you laugh, the sound mimicking nails grating across a chalkboard. "I wouldn't have minded, really."

"I'll fuck you in the morning, if you're that eager," he mumbles, and you realize you're quite agreeable to that idea. When you feel like you can move again without falling apart, you inch closer until his rapping heartbeat is beneath your palm, his arm coming around to accommodate you. You fall asleep without noticing, Daryl's soft words the only thing dropping into the quiet place that's been carved in your head.

The morning finds him opening you up with his mouth alone, and putting you on your back as he fucks you, your legs around his waist, his lips at your temple, both your hands laced tight together. "Come for me, sweetheart," he pants as he snaps his hips, an utter wreck, and all you can say is _please_.

At the dining hall, Michonne greets Daryl with a hug, and teases you about the very obvious bruises he's put on you. "The journos are gonna start speculating about the two of us fucking again," she chortles into her breakfast coffee.

"They never stop speculating, 'Chonne, they're vultures like that," Daryl reminds her coolly, slinging his arm across your shoulders. To the casual observer, the action is platonic and nothing more, but you shiver when he uses his thumb to trace the coin-shaped depressions his fingertips have left behind, smirking with a predatory, hungry air about him. All you can do is smile back helplessly, shy like you never are.

You almost jump when your phone rings, and you answer it when you see it's Carl. "Hey, bud," you say, hoping the color on your face has receded enough. "You okay? Why're you calling?"

"I just wanted to –" Carl's eyes go huge, and he shrieks, "Holy _shit_, Dad, is that Daryl Dixon?"

"Language," you bark on reflex, and Daryl sniggers into his hand, losing years until he's a little boy too, and it makes you a bit lightheaded. Even in the full light of day and away from the fugue of baseless lust, you're still struck dumb by him.

Carl is inconsolable, only wanting to talk to Mammoth Apostle's pilot. You hand the phone over to him, sheepish and scratching at the base of your skull. "I hope this isn't imposing or anything," you say, and Daryl shrugs.

"He's a cute kid." His voice gains a soft worn-denim edge to it that does dangerous things to your pulse. "Almost as cute as his dad."

Michonne about pisses herself from laughing so hard, and Daryl flips her off, still smiling down at Carl on the screen, genuinely devoted to talking to your son. You look down at your omelette, a razor-edged heat coalescing in you, stupid tic of a grin pasting itself to your face. You wonder if you can ask Michonne and Daryl to come with you to King County, meet your children in person. You can already see Judith adoring Daryl, her tiny fingers patting his face.

The Drift is silence, and for the first time in what feels like years, it also feels like peace.

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><p><strong>in case it wasn't clear, rick and shane used to be copilots, but a kaiju tore shane away while his mind was still connected to rick's. andrea and michonne were copilots too, except they failed on their first mission and michonne lost both her jaeger and her partner. daryl was teamed with merle before carol, until merle lost his hand in a kaiju fight and couldn't pilot anymore. carl is roughly the age he was in the comics, and also so rick and co. would be young and spry to operate giant machines. yeah. i'm so sorry everything is so vague and sketchy in this fic, but what can you do.<strong>

**happy new year, kids. here's hoping we all have a good one.**


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